The power of friendship

By Goldie Currie

Sometimes having a best friend who truly knows who you are and where you came from is one of the best treasures in life.

While sometimes it’s easy to take these types of friendships for granted, it’s important to cherish and recognize them as you grow older and your friendship continues to progress and become something so meaningful.

My best friend and I met when we were sixth-graders. From what I remember, we bonded over having to take the awful required gym class that year. As if junior high wasn’t awkward enough, we were forced to dress in a locker room for class and participate in made-up games we could have cared less for. The bittersweet experience, however, is one I would never take back. It was the first step in a friendship that would continue to grow even until this day.

I’m coming to a realization of how important this certain friendship is in my life.

Looking back, my best friend and I have made it through so much more than just that killer gym class.

We continued to stay friends though middle school as we defeated the tough homework assignments, the overly-enthusiastic teachers and usual awkward experiences every junior high kid must go through.

When we made it to high school, we continued life adventures together. We again faced “the worst homework assignments ever;” we always discussed who got cute and who didn’t over summer vacation; we made appearances together at school dances; and we spent long hours discussing what we want to do when we “grew up” and where we would attend college after graduation.

When you are a senior in high school you go through a phase where going to college seems like it’s going to be the biggest deal ever, and you most likely will never communicate with people from high school again. While we both had the uneasy feeling that our friendship might pull away after college, we were determined to do whatever it took to make it last.

Of course, we were ignorant to even think that way. When we got to college, we actually grew closer than ever.

Although we attended colleges at opposite ends of the state, we continued to call each other and even started communicating on the new social website at the time called Facebook. We bonded over how tough exams were, how crazy a professor’s lecture could get and talked about our first encounters with college parties, of course.

When we made it through our college careers, our bond grew even closer as we prepped to dip our toes into the real world.

We weren’t sure what we were getting into at the time, but together we focused together on resumes and job interviews until we both landed our first “big girl” jobs. I can’t say it was the jobs we both were hoping for right out of college, but at that time in our lives, it was great to just be out of the college life routine and having the option to “dress up” for work everyday sounded awesome.

Now that we are about three years into what you might call “adult life,” we continue to defeat the usual life challenges.

Today our challenges revolve around not having any money, the regular, naggy hardships of living on our own, and the awful task of having to take our vehicles into the shop for regular oil changes. This most likely could be our least favorite thing to do in life right now.

But as days march on and new life hurdles come into sight, I can say for certain it is so fantastic to have my best friend by my side reminding me that the life challenges are totally normal, and that no matter what, we are on the right track of where we’re supposed to be.